Remote Work: Benefits for Society
At a large scale, it could reshape the world for good.
This article is the third one of the remote work series I’m writing. I started with the benefits for companies and then, the benefits for people. If you still doubt transitioning from a colocated work environment to a remote one could be beneficial, these articles could help you decide.
Remote work has recently become a buzzword. In fact, the outbreak doesn’t paint an accurate picture of what remote work could be in reality, because a lot of companies have been forced to go remote overnight. And without a solid strategy, the proper tools and the right “remote culture”, it is extremely challenging to implement it efficiently. Because of the uncertainty and the overall fear, we won’t be able to analyse the results of this unprecedented experiment afterwards as the situation is biased.
But for now, let’s imagine a world where remote work is the norm, and try to assess the benefits this could bring to society. Remote work could reshape the centralisation wealth, reduce the current massive wage gap, increase diversity and inclusion and also play a significant role in diminishing pollution. Let’s get into the details.
Fewer megacities
The Centre for Cities (CfC) analysed¹ the geographical distribution of jobs in the United Kingdom and found amongst others:
• While accounting for only 12% of its landmass, cities had 59% of all jobs in England and Wales. City suburbs accounted for 9% of all land in the U.K. but 44% of all jobs. City centers occupied 0.08% of all land but 14% of employment.
• Global cities eat up most jobs. London has nearly one fifth of all jobs in England and Wales.
And the trends show it’s not going to stop — by 2030, the UN predicts that 60%² of the world’s population will be concentrated in large cities.
Paris is a good example to illustrate this. In March 2019 I started a gig in a tech company in Paris. I noticed on my first day that very few of my new colleagues were Parisians — the vast majority were coming from all corners of France. When asked the reason for that, most answered that there were simply not enough jobs in their hometowns.
Those same colleagues told me they actually hated living in Paris and were saving to be able to move back to the countryside.
Right now, work is centralised and so is wealth. People move from the countryside to gather in city centres, where most of the economical activity is thus taking place, too. Overpopulation comes as a result, with many harmful consequences we’ve already seen happening in many places: galloping urbanisation which means more concrete and fewer trees, air/water/noise-pollution, incredibly high cost of living, increased wealth gap between different layers of society, and depression. This has become a daily reality for many of us and it is not sustainable.
Remote work can offset our overcrowding problem efficiently. People would live across the whole country and would need to commute to work only for specific occasions — which means more space for all of us and a better quality of life. Cities wouldn’t be saturated anymore, and wealth would be redistributed more equally. Think about people moving back to their hometown, reinvigorating the local economy with their daily needs and newly gained purchasing power.
Decreased wealth gap
I’ll talk about software engineering because it’s a world I know, but this is applicable to many other industries.
Did you know that Czechs are very skilled in software development? They actually rank in the top 10 countries with the best developers in the world. Here are two different reports confirming this:
Let’s now compare Czech Republic and France, for example. Both scores are very close in the HackerOne report and they have the extra advantage of sharing the same time zone (UTC+2).
This is mainly explained by the fact that the cost of living between the two varies widely. A company hiring workforce outside of its borders could significantly reduce its costs and end up hiring more people.
It benefits all three: the company, the employee and society. The company reduces its costs and hire someone as skilled but also benefits greatly from hiring someone with a different background — we’re going to talk more about the importance of diversity below.
By working for a company abroad, the Czech employee earns more than if he’d done so for a local company, which has a clear positive effect on the local economy. The French employee, as a result, might earn less. But a part of the reasons he earned so much in the first place is that he had to live in a city as expensive as Paris. He could simply relocate somewhere with a lower cost of living. Now imagine if the same logic was applied on a larger scale?
Such a solution would relieve cities’ congestion and solve the overcrowding problem we mentioned above. Spreading remote work globally when jobs enable such a solution could help massively reduce the wealth gap between countries, ending up with a more balanced society.
More diversity and inclusion
Leaders know the importance of diversity and inclusion within their organisation — if you’re not convinced, I recommend this article from Dennis Nally, PwC.
According to a study by the Center for Talent Innovation (CTI), not only does this drive innovation but companies that embrace diversity also gain a higher market share and a competitive edge in accessing new markets.
Even Goldman Sachs promotes it — they announced at Davos that they will carry out IPOs only for companies with a certain diversity. But in reality, even if diversity and inclusion are an absolute imperative for any business, it’s still a challenge to implement it.
In addition to offering an unlimited talent pool to companies, remote work allows them to assure to cultivate diversity. Once you experience it, you can see the real value for the company to collaborate with people from varied backgrounds and cultures. Diversity doesn’t just benefit the business itself, but also the economies it operates in.
A good example is GitLab which is the world’s largest all-remote workforce with 1,200+ employees across 67 countries. The company Comparably granted GitLab with the “2019 Best Company For Diversity” award.
Less located pollution
Remote work has the obvious benefit of drastically reducing the commute of workers who practice it. By getting people off the roads, over 119 billion miles (≈ 192 billion km) of highway driving and 640 million barrels of oil could be saved⁵ annually. This is equivalent to taking 10 million cars off the road every year⁶, according to Global Workforce Analytics.
And as we saw earlier, large cities are where work is centralised and thus concentrate the majority of pollution generated. It has drastic consequences on health and overall wellbeing.
[…] the very air we breathe is growing dangerously polluted: nine out of ten people now breathe polluted air, which kills 7 million people every year.
Source: WHO
Promoting remote work globally could reduce greenhouse gas emissions, fuel usage, office waste and optimise our energy use. A few years ago, remote work policies by Xerox, Dell, and Aetna helped them save a combined 95,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions⁷.
A part of the solution
We already knew the benefits of remote work for companies and people. But most importantly, it is essential to get an overview of the impact it could have to on a global scale.
We have big challenges to tackle this century, especially regarding climate change. The decisions we’re going to make are crucial for our civilisation. The problems are complex and solving them will most certainly require a change in how we approach work in general. I’m deeply convinced that remote work is part of the changes we can put in place to build a better future. It only makes sense for governments and decision-makers to push its adoption quickly for all the jobs it is compatible with.
I’d love to read your thoughts about it. So please feel free to send me articles or papers you enjoyed and wish to share with me 🙏. You can quickly contact me via Twitter as well as LinkedIn.
¹ Ilona Serwicka, What the geography of jobs in England and Wales tells us about the modern economy, March 10, 2016
² Angelo Young, The World’s 33 Megacities, February 27, 2019
³ Emily Glassberg Sands and Vinod Bakthavachalam, Ranking Countries and Industries by Tech, Data, and Business Skills, May 27, 2019
⁴ Ritika Trikha, Which Country Would Win in the Programming Olympics?, August 25, 2016
⁵ Cisco WebEx infographic, Remote work can have a big impact on the environment
⁶ Jessica Howington, The Positive Environmental Impact of Remote Work, August 9, 2016
⁷ Kira M. Newman, The Environmental Benefits of Remote Work, April 22, 2015 — —
Figure 1:
Light pollution heat map of the world — uploaded by Evgeny N Kuznetsov
Jr. James H. Adams, Luis A. Anchordoqui, Jeffrey A. AppleFrom, White paper on EUSO-SPB2, March, 2017
Figure 2:
NAEI, UK National Atmospheric Emissions InventoryThis is not a sponsored post.
